Math Training Follow-up- Agenda

Initial thoughts about what the focus of the day will look like as of February 25, 2008.
I'm throwing five areas to consider out there (please feel free to add more if you want, don't be limited by my initial thoughts). I think the first two are not really optional, but the other three are negotiable. We definitely can't cover all of this! I'm just throwing topics out to get the process fully discussed and thought through.
What I envision is you adding comments, questions, concerns, saying 'NO' to some topics, 'YES' to others, so I know what I need to focus my efforts on. I know the math department has a meeting this coming week, please feel free to show them this page and get their input.

Thanks for letting me work with you!

Questions for teachers to answer before they come to the workshop:
What were my short-term literacy goals as a result of the initial workshop?
What were my long-term literacy goals as a result of the initial workshop?
Where do I sit on those goals now? Have I implemented them? Have I been unable to implement them yet? Why/why not?
What are my future goals, that I bring with me to this workshop?

Introduction:
  • Bring examples/pictures
  • Discuss attempts/success/failures
  • Discuss/Brainstorm goals for the day (just like last time, but I want You to be more forceful here, now that you've already had some time

Next steps for successes
  • What strategies were successful for me?
  • What was successful about those strategies?
  • How were my students able to access the information differently than they would have without the literacy component? How did that impact what I understand about how to help them experience the material? (This is a really big question that I think most teachers don't think about enough, I really want to hear from others about what this means to them because I'm not sure my description is as clear on 'paper' as it is in my head.)
  • How do I build off of those successful attempts/strategies?
  • What part of literacy do I now need to think about improving in my instruction?
  • How to build toward "my goals"?

Barriers to success in attempts that didn’t achieve my goals
  • What caused the strategies to be less than successful?
  • What did I learn as a result of the attempt?
  • If I were to do the strategy, again, what would I do differently?
  • How do I plan to achieve my goals, now?

Systemically, what do we do as a department to make our students better communicators of mathematics?
  • What do we see developing as patterns that we can build off of? Avoid? Act on?
  • How can we test the effectiveness of the strategies?
    • Would prefer some formative assessment feedback
    • Think Link
    • Common Assessments
      • What type of writing are they doing?
      • How do we support their success here?
    • ACT
  • Looking at CATS data to determine next steps, weaknesses that we can address departmentally

New learning to explore:
  • Technology
    • Calculators
    • CBLs
    • Smartboard
  • Manipulatives (this is a link to a PowerPoint I did on algebra tiles) and representations
  • Blogging
  • Flatworld Project

Progress towards writing to demonstrate
  • School goals
  • How do we fit into the school picture
  • How do we get our students writing mathematically for an outside audience?
  • What do they write about?
  • 12 Step O.R. Q process